It Could Happen Here - Title 42 pt 3: The Mutual Aid Response

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

In the third part of the series on the end of Title 42, James speaks to volunteers who gave their time and resources to help the people detained in the open air by CBPSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We try and carpool, try and shove into cars as best you can just so that we don't have a mile long line of cars.

We have trash bags, we have gloves, we have things that we're bringing up there. So we have cars that you can get all of that out of. Once we pull over, we're also setting up a couple pop-ups. Hukumba, California is a tiny town. You've probably never heard of it. It's actually really charming. There's a hot spring and a gorgeous hotel, a few stores selling art, trinkets, that kind of thing. There's a lovely lake fed by the spring. And on this sunbaked morning, there are about 50 people outside an old petrol station, nervously pounding bottles of water, applying sunscreen,

and getting ready to head out to the desert to clear up the ad hoc migrant camp that has held as many as 1,500 people out in the open when Title 42 ended and Border Patrol made no plans to keep them anywhere. It was a diverse bunch of people hidden beneath sun hats. There's an Australian film producer who was at a conference in Orlando and booked a flight over, a grad student painter, the folks who were in the Hukumba Hotel who organized this whole thing, their friends from There's an Australian film producer who was at a conference in Orlando and booked a flight over. A grad student painter. The folks who own the Hukumba Hotel who organise this whole thing. Their friends from the hospitality industry in San Diego. There were students and mums and dads and about the entire population of this tiny desert town.

There were also two former international aid workers who own a tower where you can look at the desert, which is actually a much cooler thing than it sounds. And there's also a museum of boulders right next to it. You should probably check them out if you're in the area. I spent the day helping out in Okumba after the refugees, some of them in handcuffs, had been taken by private contractors to be processed by CBP's Office of Field Operations. We met at a petrol station in the middle of town. The space where the pumps should be was filled with tons, and I do mean tons, of bottled water, masks, hand sanitizer, and other necessary supplies. When I'd arrived the night before, around 10pm, the eerie green and yellow lights reflecting from

the roof had lit up the pallets of water like some kind of giant lava lamp. Driving across the desert, the town looked like it was glowing. The town certainly has had a bit of a glow up in the last few years. Three business partners purchased the Okumba Hot Springs Hotel, a down-in-the-mouth property that had once been a glamorous desert resort, and they've been restoring the place for nearly two years. Inadvertently, they also purchased a lot of land and a few other run-down buildings in the town that were sold as a lot with the hotel. It was in one of these buildings, the old gas station, that they set up a de facto mutual aid hub almost overnight. The hotel's not finished yet and they probably didn't make much progress on it during the week when they were feeding more than a thousand people in the desert. The town's lake, fed by a natural

spring, an old bathhouse, used to be attractions., the bathhouse's roof has fallen off, but it still makes a pretty cool concert venue, and the whole town offers commanding views of the border wall, which sadly is only a couple of hundred yards from the main street. When I arrived in Hukumba, everything was close. The mini-mart was sold out, the hotel was still being worked on, and the hotel kitchen was churning out food for volunteers at the clean-up effort. I asked Marissa, one of the volunteers I met that day, about her first impressions on arriving at the meeting point.

I was incredibly impressed by what the people of Hakumba and the hotel group of individuals that have organized this, like I couldn't believe seeing their donation depot in that old car wash, just how well organized everything was, and that they provided so much for the volunteers, and just the level of love and compassion. And it was an amazing opportunity to be part of, very humbling. I'd been there since late the night before, after visiting Border Crossings in California and Arizona. And Jeff, one of the co-owners of the hotel, kindly let me pull up my truck in some desert behind his house. Now, I'm a person who enjoys sleeping outside, and I

do it as often as I can. I try and camp at least once a month. But that night, I was cold, even underneath my down blanket. And I couldn't help but think of how desperate it must have been to spend nearly a week out there with nothing but a Mylar space blanket and some thorny bushes to keep you warm. It's certainly not the welcome that one would expect from the richest nation on earth which had three years to repair for the day title 42 ended. To get a bit of background on the town I spoke to Natalie. So the previous owner bought it at an auction and i don't think that the previous owner didn't realize how much he was getting and he kind of just like neglected a bunch of it you know and then he he was older and so he finally sold off the hotel he thought he was just buying the hotel

but he buying all the land as well so they when they bought the hotel they acquired all the land and they're actually putting money into it and fixing everything up, which is really wonderful. The hotel and lake and hot spring really are wonderful, but the scene that had played out there on the 11th of May was anything but. Within a short period of time, more than a thousand people of all ages and nationalities will be held in the open desert and left to fend largely for themselves. I'll let Natalie describe the space they were in. There's lots of cactuses everywhere so that's environmental like watch out where you're walking um that it's hot it's hot in the day and really cold at night because it's the high desert um there can be gusts of wind that can just

take over get dust in your eyes um your hair everything everything's just, you're just filthy. I don't, lack of food. I mean, there's no resources. You're in the middle of nowhere. I've talked to a lot of the volunteers, many of whom have been in the desert for nearly a week. They'd first been made aware of the impending humanitarian crisis late on Thursday night, but one of the people working on a renovation of the Hot Springs Hotel got a call about it. Within a few hours, the hotel's owners and all their staff were running what became very nearly the only source of food, shelter, and water for more than a thousand people trapped and held in the desert by CBP. I spoke to Sam, another volunteer, to get a sense of the response. Now Sam is a kind of guy who just looks like he's at home in the desert.

His wide-brim hat, boots, and long-sleeved shirt and pants told me he'd spent plenty of days under the baking sun out here. And his readiness with an isopropyl alcohol spray to disinfect people's boots after walking in an area that was likely covered in human shit told me he'd been around one or two situations like this in the past. I spent a great deal of my life as his second career working in developmental relief logistics in Southeast Asia, mainly working with large organizations, for example, World Food Program, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, many, many different places. In the context of that kind

of experience, it's easy to understand why people come to the United States. But I asked Sam to put the situation here into perspective for me it's understandable that folks came to the u.s but why to a tiny desert town of 500 people these people were radically unprepared for what they were going to go through because they were sold a bill of goods by coyotes on the other side about what was going to happen to them you understand So they had really no idea what they were getting into at all. Yeah. And so there was not anything in the way of life-threatening situations for any of those people in any meaningful way. A great deal of discomfort. It could have turned very badly if these people here had not stepped up

because the border patrol was completely overwhelmed. Yeah. And so there was never that bad of a situation here compared to what I have seen in other places in the past. As Sam pointed out, the migrants were now gone, but we were still surrounded by tons of supplies. But at the time, there was no way of knowing the scope or scale of the need. And people reacted as best they could. Actually, it was overkill, but you had no way of knowing right at the time. There's just no way to neat and people reacted as best they could. Before anyone knew how or if this was going

to end, or really what even was going on, dozens of people across the county decided to help. One of them was Katie. Here she is describing some of the volunteers she worked alongside. There was a hodgepodge of people as volunteers, and leading it were some of the owners of a hotel out there and that was the main organizers but who showed up were people from the town um people that i knew and recognized um there was some really devout like they're 24 hours a day and then there were some coming in and out. But I met people from all over the county,

and most of them answered the call through Instagram of the hotel. All those volunteers called their friends, who called their friends, who gradually coordinated a response. Natalie first became aware of this, as many volunteers did, through an Instagram post by Melissa and other of the three co-owners of the Okumba Hotel on Thursday night, just as Title 42 was ending. Natalie saw the post and decided to help. At first, she wanted to leave right then, at 1am, as soon as she'd seen the post. But after consulting her family, she decided

to make her own post, asking for people to bring supplies that were needed. Soon she was overwhelmed by the response. Yeah I mean immediately even at one in the morning I was getting messages because I posted it that's when I posted the story. I immediately got messages from friends saying I'll bring a blanket over what's your address. Yeah everyone just kind of rallied and started bringing supplies over. Collecting money as well. Some friends started collecting money and then bought stuff and brought loads of food and things to my house. Her husband ferried the supplies to Okumba,

where they were joined by donations from all over the county in the old petrol station. Like Natalie, Katie also saw a post and immediately felt compelled to help. She called a friend and some members of her family and set about raising funds and buying supplies. So I met my friend at a cafe and in that, in the meantime, and I don't know how much of this is really important.

This is great. Yes, keep going. So in the meantime, I text my mother and my two sisters how much of this is really important this is great just keep going so in the meantime i text my mother and my two sisters who live on the east coast and just it was late at night for them and i just said i i would love for you to um send prayers because because that's something that I believe in. I believe in prayer or intention and thought reality. And some of it was just because I felt so touched,

like praying for the community that I love too. And the next thing I know, like my Venmo was blowing up and there was a thousand dollars in my Venmo sent from my family members. And so by the time my friend arrived we were like let's go and we um filled our car with uh amazingly we found like organic there's grocery outlet right so we found organic soup for you know a dollar something a can and and we spent a few hundred dollars and the next morning we met early and we stopped in Elkhorn on the way and we spent all the rest on we went to three or four thrift stores and bought every blanket and hat and baby carrier because um we have both focused on motherhood in our careers. I asked the people I spoke to about a week later

how the experience had impacted them. It was overwhelming. Just the way the community really came around and supported the people in Hukumba that were trying to help. After we finished cleaning up, when we were back at the gas station, the Amazon driver was delivering,

I think he delivered 350 boxes. And so we had to open them up and sort them. And there was so much food um i think that it was insane amount of food um and it was awesome it was really cool just to see how many people stabbed up and donated unlike some of the people i saw in san ysidro natalie katie sam and marissa are not part of an ngo or a mutual aid collective. They're just people who wanted to help. And that describes most of the people in Hukumba, although some of them did have previous and regular volunteer experience with excellent

groups like Border Kindness. I asked Katie to reflect on the mutual aid approach and the absence of massive multi-million dollar organizations. Yeah, the Red Cross wasn't there, right? No, they weren't there. We were told that the Red Cross couldn't come unless Border Patrol called, and Border Patrol told us that they weren't allowed to call the Red Cross. Yeah, that's a pretty standard. The one institution that did show support to people in Hukumba

was one that you might not expect, given the support for this cruel immigration policy by almost all the Democrats in D.C. But things are different when you can see the results of these policies with your own eyes. given the support for this cruel immigration policy by almost all the Democrats in DC. But things are different when you can see the results of these policies with your own eyes. Perhaps that's why I didn't see a single elected official in my entire week at the border. But one person I missed, but who everyone mentioned, was a lady who worked for California Senator Steve Padilla.

I won't name her, as I don't have her permission, but hopefully one day soon we'll be able to interview her. I'll let Katie describe the role this woman played. There was someone from Steve Padilla's team and that's the woman I rode with and she was incredible. Her brother-in-law is the chef at the hotel so I think I, I mean, she might have came anyway, but she came faster. And there was true connection. And she stood up to the Border Patrol and said, you know, said,

we're allowed, we're here on behalf of this senator. So, I mean, I saw some head-to-head arguments about our right to be there. And most of us weren't paying attention to that. We were paying attention to the people that we were around. And no one that was out there didn't believe that we should be out there and that more help should be out there sadly part of that familiarity with the system this woman brought to the team also meant a

familiarity with the cruel and arbitrary nature of it katie says that they had to organize for that as well so um my friend and i we ended up riding in her truck so in steve padilla's senator padilla's um assistance truck so we had the opportunity to ask some questions that probably everyone out there wanted to know including the migrants and it was like what will happen and um what's the process from here and how do you know that these people are being tended to and i literally heard her on the phone getting as many bodies on the ground to start going to those centers where they're being taken to make sure that they were that that we would follow them through the entire process as best possible monitoring they're well well cared for that they were well cared for as well cared for as possible yeah in a system in a process like that

yeah but she literally said they're going to be bussed off and put in cages and that they would do their best to make sure that no one was split up and that everyone was fed, showered, and they weren't allowed to bring anything with them. all of the things that everyone donated that had to be left behind, including some of the stuffed animals. For all the volunteers I spoke to, the chance to be of service was empowering. Here's Natalie discussing that. Yeah, I mean, well, like in so many times you like feel overwhelmed with like so much suffering in this world and like what can one person do you know and and so it did feel good that to actually see an immediate impact like I'm

doing this and this is the result because sometimes you can just get discouraged you know like we're just one person what can we really do and can we really make an impact and just seeing that and being able to see directly how that um one person can impact you know can rally like just seeing how my friends came together you know went shopping bought things gathered money collected money you know my really good friend sam she um went to her local bar after she collected a bunch of money, went and dropped stuff, supplies off at my house. She was just down at her local bar and just chatting with them and like, oh, what did you do today? And so she told them, oh, I collected money and I bought supplies. And the people, she ended up collecting about 200 more dollars at the bar from people

hearing her story. and so then the next day she went and bought more supplies and she actually ended up driving them out herself she ended up doing like three drips just from her own talking to people and collecting so just like the little impact that you know everyone just kind of coming together and making a difference. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that

actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, line.com. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.

sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In San Isidro, a pretty diverse range of San Diegans came to help. On the first night, I personally left at about one in the morning after spending almost two hours trying to leave, but needing to get charged phones back to their owners by loudly in Spanish, then French, then English, describing the backgrounds on the phone or the colour of their case. It wasn't a great system, and by the weekend, Kaber and others had seen that more help and organization was needed, and they decided to plan a response.

Here's Kaber describing how they prepared for that. Yeah, yeah, we met up at a Target near my area because I had already thought that, you know, maybe I'll just grab some, you know, I was paying attention to people I knew who were doing aid and what supplies they were saying was needed. The particular store near me has, like, a wall of travel size, like these giant tubs where you can basically just scoop out 100 deodorant

pens and toothpaste and things like that. Kepa met up with some other members of a local mutual aid group. I'll make sure to include donation links for all the groups I've mentioned at the end of this series, so please make sure to listen right through to the end. I met up with him, and he had just received a bunch of donations through mutual aid networks, received ablation donations through the network. So we know even more of the travel size. That's in two to two hygiene kits and deodorant and a bunch of friends and papers

because the kids that are between the walls don't really have much to do. And unfortunately, since those were those went really fast. And so we got a whole bunch of bags of all those kinds of supplies, and then we dropped out of the border from there. By the time they arrived, various organizations had organized areas along the wall for different kinds of aid to be passed through. Everything from clothes to food to medical supplies and toilet paper

was piled up and given out. People would show up for donations and organize the toilet paper, food, everything like that. And people would just come up to the wall and if their family needed something, they would just kind of point to it and ask us if we were able to, you know, if there was a common language there. So yeah, we just kind of, you know, gave things as people needed them. I know that I helped give out some of the crayons and pads of paper and those were a big hit. Tons of kids all came running over from all the parts of the camp when they heard that there were toys being given out.

So it was heartbreaking, but it made me smile too. Seeing them smile made me smile. Because of the need to use CBP1, and of course the need to stay in touch with families back home, there was a constant and overwhelming demand for phone charging. News reporters took phones back to charge in their cars. Some people bought charge bricks and power strips, and mutual aid groups wrote names on the back of the phones

using painter's tape and Sharpies so they wouldn't get separated from their owners. By the second day, it was a better system, but on the first day it was chaos. I'll let Kabe, who spent a whole day charging phones, describe the system that volunteers came up with to mitigate that chaos a little bit. And obviously they couldn't charge their phones if they're just in this kind of desert gap between these walls that doesn't have any kind of amenities or anything. So we had a system where they would pass a phone through, and we would put a piece of tape on it with their name, and give them a piece of tape with their name, the same name,

and then they would give us that they came back a couple hours later and give us the tape back and we'd match the names in the phone um and and that was it worked well enough i mean it was still an extraordinarily chaotic process i mean we had we always had at least 100 phones um on our side of the wallet at any given time um and and some people had um you know some people like any given time. And some people had, you know, some people had chargers, some people didn't. Some people had Android or Samsung or old iPhones. Some people had wall adapters

and some people didn't have the wall AC adapters. So we kind of had to, every phone that came through was we had to find a way to get it, you know, daisy-chained into the set of generators that we had, which was do we have power strips, do we have the right cables, and do we have space on those cables. And I think it was it was a bit of a puzzle the whole time. The only part of it that really overwhelmed me was we did overload. Someone brought a bunch of USB-C power strips and we blew out one of them.

And so there was now eight phones attached to it that I had to find new spaces for. And I was just like... that was the only point where I was just frustrated by this whole situation. In addition to the fact that the phones that were plugged into that strip had been charging for who knows how long since that thing short-circuited or whatever happened to it. It was chaos, but it was a good natured chaos. Over the several days that migrants were detained in the open

with no shelter and inadequate sanitation just about two miles from the discount mall where you can buy cheap Ralph Lauren shirts if that's your jam, people showed up in ever-increasing numbers. The American Friends Service Committee helped organize volunteers into groups to distribute food, package up wet wipe snacks and medicines, give out tarps, and do just about anything else that they could, or anything else that they could fit into ziplock bags that could be passed through gaps in the wall at least. People who had been immigrants themselves, or who were the children of immigrants, or anything else that they could fit into Ziploc bags that could be passed through gaps in the wall at least. People who had been immigrants themselves, or who were the children of immigrants,

were notably numerous among the volunteers. I spoke to one of them. My name is Lon Chai. I'm part of Asian Solidarity Collective, a grassroots organization here in San Diego. I've been coming over here since yesterday. I came here around 5, 6 yesterday, and then I came back through here this morning and been here since I got home at 12 last night and woke up, dropped my kid off and came right back with more supplies. I've been reaching out to family, friends and community to help donate supplies and

things like that, food, whatever they may have. And I've pretty much been driving around the city and collecting from folks that can't make it so I can bring it down here myself. So that's what I've been doing. Lung Chai explained to me why it was so important to show up. My community, I'm pretty sure they're sympathetic to this because I'm a first-generation Cambodian American here in the U.S.

And when my parents and my family fled their country, they went through this as well. So somebody somewhere came and provided the support, provided the aid, the donations for them to be able to make it to America, to cross over and able to provide out here for me growing up out here. You know, so it's just, I just sympathize with it, with the whole thing. crossover and able to provide out here for me growing up out here, you know. So it's just, I just sympathize with it, with the whole thing. I mean, everybody should feel the same way because somewhere down the line, our families went through similar situations. If you're not an indigenous, then your family somewhere down the history went through the same thing.

So, you know, everybody should have a heart for this and be able to come down here and donate or donate their time or supplies, whatever the case may be, you know, come out and help. He also explained why he feels it's important

to encourage empathy for refugees. Well, you have to keep in mind there's families out here, there's young children, there's babies. I mean,

it takes a lot for a mother to pick up her infant child and to leave where she's coming from. So that just says a lot about what's going on, where she's coming from, for her to trek and to go through this, to sit out here in the cold and stuff. Because if she would rather endure this and take the risk and the chances, that means where she's coming from is not as, you know, she's willing to take that risk. chances, that means where she's coming from is not as, you know, she's willing to take that risk.

Later that night, I saw an Afghan family come to help the other Afghan families. Their kids talked to other Afghan kids separated by the border wall. They passed crayons through the wall and coloring books. And their little daughter asked her dad if she could give her watch to the Afghan girl being held in the camp. Her dad said, of course, I don't record or photograph people's children, certainly not without of course, I don't record or photograph people's children, certainly not without asking, and I wasn't about to interrupt them, but it was a very sweet moment. The father of the family had worked in the Army Corps of Engineers. He'd been to the border before to build this section of the wall. I didn't really need to ask him how it felt to see folks stuck behind it, but it said a lot that he and his family had taken the time to drive down, buy bags of supplies, and then come face to face with the people who needed them and

hand them out. Like dozens of other folks, they tried to pass whatever they could through little gaps in the wall to make someone's day a little bit brighter. Another volunteer who we heard from yesterday came from a local group called Pana. Hamayra had been at the wall since five in the morning and it was getting on for 5pm when we spoke. I normally ask people what they ate for breakfast just to tune in the volume levels on my recorder a bit, but I'm going to include it this time just so you can see how long her day had been and how hard she'd been working. Okay. What do you want me to say? Is that good? Tell me what you had for breakfast. I don't remember anymore. French toast. French toast.

My name is Hamaya Yousafi, and I'm with the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, PANA, an organization in San Diego that fights for the full inclusion of refugees and those who come from refugee-producing countries. We spoke about the emergency that had kept her here all day. So in terms of this morning, I mean, I was, you know, very concerned because there was an asylum seeker who had an emergency and was rushed out of this place.

So now, like, for example, where we are at right now is people who are being detained in the most inhumane way possible. This is going against CBP's own protocols and policies as to how they're being detained with no, they're not giving them food, they're not giving them bathrooms, they're not giving them basic, basic things that they need to survive and so that's why the community is out here today to do that. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows.

As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars,

from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.

Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sadly, not everyone who showed up at the makeshift detention facility was showing up in solidarity. Local anti-migrant activist and blogger Roger Ogden showed up.

Now, Ogden might be familiar to some listeners due to his attempts to host what he called a Patriot Picnic and his advocacy for the removal of the historic murals in Chicano Park. Ogden organized gatherings in the park in 2017 and 2018 and they resulted in a huge and overwhelming community response to defend the park. And this time Ogden decided to keep to himself but Natalie ran into some people who weren't quite as shy about their opinions. You know a lot of the people in the community are you know lower income and you know they are struggling in their own struggle on their and so i know

you know maybe i don't know like for those people i don't know like it's hard i don't know i mean towards the end like when I was walking to my car um this man this man in a car like pulled up and he's like excuse me what's going on over there and I was like oh we're gathering you know supplies for the asylum seekers and then I you know like I if you're from here you kind of or if you're in Hukumba you kind of already knew what was going on and so him asking that me that I was kind of like and then he just started laying into um I've had illegals you know have broken into my house a few times why are you supporting illegals and I'm like we're trying to let like make sure that people don't die and he just kept going off on me and so he you know his just the whole,

all the talking points that people have about not allowing people to seek asylum here. And so I just walked away. Marisa didn't run into the same kind of vocal opposition, but she said in her conversations and attempts to process everything she'd seen, she ran into some of the sort of knee-jerk responses that people can only really make about immigration when they haven't looked the cruelty that they're advocating for in the face. It took me a little while to kind of work through just how I felt about it on an emotional, maybe spiritual level.

I, you know, I spoke with family and friends about it, about my experience and, and it's, it's difficult to, um, I found it difficult to explain my experience because I don't know that somebody can really truly understand that unless they've actually been out there and done it themselves um because the arguments or or their kind of debate so to speak what they would come back at me with when I was sharing that is but we don't have enough food or housing to be able to support this that many people coming in and I'm like but we just had so many people and so much money put out there to help in a very short amount of time look how many donations were donated how much money was contributed in a short amount of time from not that many people I'm like obviously we do have like, obviously we do have the money. Obviously we do have the food. So where's the, where's the breakdown? Like, is it our system that just doesn't allow for that to happen? I don't know. And that's where like, I don't, I don't understand

it enough, but I feel like it just made me realize that I, I don't know that anybody that I spoke to afterward really understands it enough either because their arguments or their defense and what they tried to share on the opposite side of me going out there and supporting just felt like it was just something to say you know and, and like what they, what they hear from the general media out there. And they, they also don't really, they can't quite grasp it. So they're just kind of throwing something out there, I guess, is what it, what it felt like.

Kaba also ran into some less than charitable San Diegans, this time down in Santa Cedra. Yeah. So I guess the first part is, is why they might have or how they might have found us there, which is there's a local news organization in San Diego called KUSI, which is kind of,

I would describe as a local equivalent of something like One American News, which is really unfortunate because we already have One American News here. But they are pretty well known for kind of a lot of

misinformation kind of scaremongering about unhoused people, immigrants, vaccines, and all that sort of thing, but with kind of a local news sort of aesthetic to it. And they were, as far as I could tell, they were really the only identifiable media that were there that sort of sort of thing but with kind of a local news sort of aesthetic to it um and they were as far as i could tell they were really the only other viable media that were there

um throughout the day i read articles eventually that made me realize there were other um um reporters there but they weren't identifying themselves the way that he was i was um but they assigned this one um cameraman just shooting b-roll i guess and he was walking to all the different parts of the wall, and like, all the different sort of stations for aid, and like, trying to, like really trying to get as many faces as possible. You could kind of tell that that's like what he was doing. Everyone who I was around, I was kind of, you know, oriented mostly with kind of like, sort of like anarchist mutual aid uh people um and and you know when they saw the k-usi truck they were like okay i'm going to get a mask on you know and i still had that in 95 with me so i wore that and i um i had a you know slightly identifying logo on my

sweatshirt um which i taped over um so that you know that that image wouldn't uh show up I taped over so that, you know, that image wouldn't show up. Now, KUSI have drifted further and further right since 2020, along with their relatively minuscule viewership. These days, they engage in fake news culture war stuff, like repeating the recent false accusations that Target was making tuckable swimming costumes for kids, or labelling everyone in the asylum process illegal immigrants. It's sadly pretty standard for right-wing news organisations now. Ker thinks that some of the people who saw footage on KUSI or perhaps found

the location posted on Ogden's blog came down to the border. Like several hours later that's like when we started to see people you know kind of come by and we could tell that they weren't volunteers because like when people like plenty of people who weren't even necessarily volunteering would drive by and say like, hey, I just heard about you and I brought a case of water and they bring in the water and then they drive away. directly. They would just kind of get out of their exceptionally large SUVs and just kind of watch. And they would kind of get a little bit closer at a time, and then a little bit closer, and kind of whisper to each other and point at things. And it's just kind of, they were just watching. And they got close enough that I could read their shirts, and the shirts had a slogan that's associated with them, a Christian nationalism slogan. So there was this whole family, and it was kind of sad that the kids were wearing the shirts too.

And so I kind of figured out that that's what was going on. And I never talked to them them I didn't approach them but I stood when I was you know getting closer and closer I kind of positioned myself in between the rest of the volunteers and and this group um and and just kind of you know didn't really stare at them just kind of looked at them um and just made it clear with my body language that I like I knew they were doing like they weren't, like they weren't doing any kind of super agent thing or whatever, they were being really really obvious and I just stood and positioned myself in a way that indicated that I know what you're doing and you're not going to get close, you're not going to interfere with what we're doing here, you're not going to come talk

to anyone or troll anyone or whatever you might wanted. And eventually one of the people who is either a volunteer or worked for like one of the NGOs can definitely tell there was something going on. So she went over and had a conversation with them that I couldn't hear and eventually they decided to leave. And I think she was just kind of trying to be diplomatic but just sort of like asked them if they wanted to help and if they don't want to help then you know you could go be somewhere else i suppose um and and it was um i mean the sort of one uh amusing part to call it that was that they apparently complained to this person about me uh because they said that um I had been watching them and I was racially profiling them because they were white. And I realize now that this is an alarmist

interview, but just for the listeners, I am very, very white myself. I think it's important when we discuss volunteering to honor how hard this kind of experience can be on people. Obviously, the trauma associated with seeing people brutalized by the state and capital is not the same as being brutalized by state and capital yourself, but that doesn't mean it's easy. I asked Natalie to reflect a little on children's toys we found in a shelter when we were cleaning up the camp. Like as a mom, like I have my own children and it just really, it was emotional. It's like, it's just uh like i'm like who's who what child was playing with us you know here in this space and you know that no child should be ever in you

know an encampment like that or it just no one should be living outside no one should be doing that but also it's like kind of like the humanity in a way like that you know even a child's going to play wherever a child's going to play and like that little toy of little hopefully it brought that kid some joy in that moment you know if it was their little piece of home or someone gave it to him or what you know know, it was, yeah, the reality, it was like a person, you know, like a little artifact of someone who was actually there, you know, like it was a little more tangible than, you know, a sock, you know, that's not, I'm not thinking, oh, who wore that sock, but think of who was playing with that joy, you know, was it a little boy, a little girl,

how old were they, did they bring it home, are missing it when they saw and I saw they had that she needed people to clean up it was like okay I took a day off of work and went out there and just felt it's overwhelming almost I mean just one day of me working out there was really emotional I can't imagine how you know Melissa and all the people that were on the ground just dealing with it. And I know they're just struggling a little bit and just processing it all has been really hard. Really hard.

It's just how privileged we are. No one leaves our country because they want to. They leave because they have to. but they feel like they have to and you know it's I mean it's respecting and honoring and understanding the privilege that you're in and not taking it for granted because it's very easy to both Katie and Marissa said they don't really identify as political and that they wanted to be there as people. Sometimes, often, politics can become a complicated game of numbers and statistics. But it's important to remember that what this is really about is organising in such a way that we can take care of one another. And that the most important politics of all is

the politics of feeding hungry people and maybe bringing a sad child a stuffed animal. Here's Katie talking about the community response I think I'm a really compassionate person and I'm not very political in the sense that like I don't really participate My life and my community's life is solution-oriented. So I saw that on a large scale. When people come together, we create solutions. And you don't wait for someone like the government to show up and fix it. Because then people will die. You know, I mean, that's the reality is if that community didn't activate, there would have been a lot of dead people in the desert.

Katie shared with me that she'd been having a difficult time, feeling guilty for not having the language skills to do more and questing her own worthiness to be there helping. But in the end, she said, she felt that what she'd done was right and important. I'll leave you with her thoughts, and tomorrow I'll be back to talk about the people who put everyone in this situation in the first place, the Department of Homeland Security.

I think an important thing is like so many times we hear about things and we say, isn't that awful? And we kind of shut down because we don't feel empowered or we don't know how to help. And literally a smile makes a difference a feeling of like i see you and you belong on this planet makes a difference and you know little kids packing up canned goods and fruit snacks for other little kids they didn't see those kids but when the adult said they're going to be so happy to get that package they felt like they made a difference

and those little girls are going to grow up and not be afraid to step up and make a difference. I think a lot of people think like they can't do enough so they don't do anything and if we all just do a little bit or what you can then I think we would see a very large impact. Hukumba is a town of 500 and they just fed thousands, housed thousands, clothed thousands, hugged and welcomed thousands of human beings. And those people in that town don't have much access and they made a difference. And I was proud to be a part of that community in the way that I'm on the fringe of it

and it made me want to be even more a part of it. even more a part of it. My feelings and intuition about that town were confirmed by watching the simplest action make an incredible impact on real lives and real people. And that this isn't demographics, it's real bodies. This isn't demographics. It's real bodies that have beating hearts and breathe.

And we all share the same air and the same water. And we're all connected. And when you make one little drip in the bucket, it actually does make a difference. And I think that stops us sometimes when we think what we have isn't enough to give. But when someone has nothing, what you have is more than what they can imagine. find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow of Rife. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of Rife, an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Get her offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba?

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.